The Gaming Den

Apparently, as more and more retarded dragon fetish books get released, the dracophiliac ninnies who are slowly destroying our hobby becoming more aggressive in pushing this retarded idea.

Who came up with this? This is dumb. Even high level dragons can barely cast spells at all. You'd have a better time convincing me that devils or rakshakas or friggin' liches are the source of arcane magic. Dragons also don't have powers that suggest that they can tap into the secrets of reality. They're gigantic lizards with elemental breath weapons.

Half-dragons or the stupid variety of dragon-descended races don't, in any sourcebook I know, gain a significant advantage to casting spells over, say, elves.

Who decided this stupid bullshit? Where the hell is this coming from? Who do we need to throw a blanket party for to stop this? Seriously, I want to curbstomp them in front of an elementary schoolhouse.

This also holds true for Shadowrun, too, but to a greater extent. Fucking Jesus.

I think I hate dragons more than kobolds now.

I honestly can't answer for D&D. D&D dragons have never been magically impressive and in the current edition they are perhaps less impressive magically than ever before (in that now you're expected to 1 on 1 a juvenile blue dragon at 11th level rather than 5th, so its 1st level spellcasting is meaningless). The Shadowrun dragon lives in a world that has vectored thrust hover tanks, and its signature power of "is really big and scaly" isn't even impressive. So they're extremely magically delicious.

Furthermore, the Shadowrun backstory is that magic was around like 6000 years ago and then it wasn't and now it's back. So evryone with the "crazy long lived" tag knows magic from the before time when magic was awesome. In Shadowrun, dragons didn't really "start" magic, they just happen to be th only people who remember 9th level spells.

But most D&D settings don't have a down cycle with no magic in it in the recent past. The fact that dragons are really long lived means that perhaps they'd remember the juju of a fallen empire or two, but that's it. They really don't have an excuse to be much more magically delicious than anyone else. And indeed, in their actual profiles they aren't.

-Username17

If memory is an indication Aboleths should be the source of arcane magic.

Well, Dragons are an ancient race, and are one of the few that come with arcane built in. Maybe the idea is that they're the ones who had sprog that did magic, hence sort of fathered it.

The decendents often outdo their ancestors, that's hopefully how a race based on education works.

Other than that... There's gnomes, for gosh darn it, and they don't have dragon ancestors. And elves. And other fae. And...

-Crissa

MrWaesel wrote:If memory is an indication Aboleths should be the source of arcane magic.

I thought they were psychic?

Well they remember everything their ancestors knew and people they ate knew, so if being the source of arcane magic is remembering when all of it was new/where it comes from/how it really works, Aboleth got it covered.

[action]goes back and rereads Waesel's sentence four or five times[/action]

Aha!

I read what you wrote incorrectly. Silly me...

I've never really thought about sources for magic, though... It would make interesting plot for a game.

Have you been reading Dragon Magic? I hear thats like microwaving your brain.

I've read it 1.5 times and, yes, it turns your brain to mush. Stay away from this book or else.

I've read a number of "Dragons are Teh Aw3zomesauce!" backgrounds and I think I've yet to come across "Dragons are the source of all magic!" yet. I think I'll give Dragon Magic a pass.

That's not to say that I don't think Dragons shouldn't be awesome. They should just be able to back up the awesomeness without cheap tricks and masturbation.

-Desdan

I've read a number of "Dragons are Teh Aw3zomesauce!" backgrounds and I think I've yet to come across "Dragons are the source of all magic!" yet. I think I'll give Dragon Magic a pass.

It's only hinted at in the PHB, but between Dragonlance, Dragon Magic, Draconomicon, Races of Dragon, Eberron, etc. the proponents of this dumb theory pretty much slap you in the face with it.

Well, Dragonlance and Eberron are independent campaign settings, so whatever they want doesn't really have bearing on D&D as a whole. And, umm, if I remember right, magic in Dragonlance comes directly from the gods, with dragons being more or less aliens.

Eberron has the entire world being three god-dragons, mythologically. So, uh, yeah.